800,000 Iraqi Children Not Attending School

Karen Button

Schools in Iraq will soon resume, but thousands of worried families will
be keeping their children at home for fears of kidnapping or worse.

Girls are at particular risk. A joint Ministry of Interior (MoE) and
UNICEF study found that of those who do not attend school, 74 percent
are female children.

A recent report by the UK-based organisation Save the Children, entitled
"Rewrite the Future: Education for children in conflict-affected
countries," documents the effects of armed conflict on primary education
in 30 countries. Some 115 million primary-aged children do not attend
school for various reasons, the report says, yet by far the biggest
contributor is conflict, which deprives one in three, or 43 million,
from attending.

In Iraq that translates to 818,000 primary-aged children, or 22.2
percent of Iraq’s student population, who are not attending school.

Since 2003, violence has dramatically increased in a country that once
enjoyed relative security. Attacks on schools by US and Iraqi government
forces and civilian militias, kidnappings by organised crime, and the
ever-present threat of car bombs, sniper’s bullets and random shootings
all contribute to the violence.

Iraq’s education ministry reported that in the first half of the 2005
academic year alone, 64 children were killed and 57 injured in attacks
on schools. Another 47 were kidnapped. Yet these numbers don’t include
the children who were killed or injured on their way to or from school.

Besides violence, displacement is a contributing factor to student
nonattendance. Thousands of children are from families who’ve fled
US-led sieges on their communities or sectarian violence and therefore
don’t have access to education.

In a June report, the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission on Refugees)
put the number of refugees inside Iraq at 1.8 million, an increase of
800,000 people from last year. Not included are the estimated
100,000-150,000 who were displaced as a result of US military operations
in Ramadi this summer.

Professors have also been a target of Iraq’s violence, causing a severe
shortage in teachers. In the first four months of 2005, 311 teachers and
employees with the education ministry were killed and another 158 injured.

During that same time, 417 schools, including universities, had been
attacked, resulting in the closure of several. According to the Ministry
of Higher Education, close to 180 professors have been killed between
February and August; another 3,250 have fled the country.

While there are no accurate figures for how many teachers have left Iraq
since the US-led invasion, statistical records kept by the University
Professors Union of Iraq show that over 10,000 professionals, including
physicians, have fled the country since 2003.

Two more left just last month. Earlier this spring, I met with Saleh
Mohammed and his wife Eman Hussain* in Amman. Both taught at Baghdad
universities. They told me their concern was mostly for their son, who
they had moved to Amman where about 500,000 other Iraqis now live. They
planned, however, to stay in Baghdad, despite the danger. Now, six
months later, they have left their beloved country due to the dire
security situation, unsure when they might return.

"The number of teachers leaving the country this year is huge and almost
double those who left in 2005," Professor Salah Aliwi, director general
of studies planning in the Ministry of Higher Education reported to IRIN
(Integrated Regional Information Networks). "Every day, we are losing
more experienced people, which is causing a serious problem in the
education system."

This month the MoE announced it is raising salaries by 20-50 percent in
attempts to entice teachers to stay. It remains to be seen if that will
make any difference. Even with the more than 13 thousand guards hired by
the MoE to protect educational institutions in Iraq, it has not been
sufficient to calm the violence or quell the exodus.

Once the model of education in the Middle East, twelve years of grueling
sanctions and three years of bloody occupation have left Iraq’s system
in shambles, a generation of children both traumatised and, it seems,
deprived of education.

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